As New Year’s Eve draws near, it’s natural to pause and reflect on the December 31st’s that have come before. The parties, the pressure, the collective insistence that something should change at midnight. So often, the turning of the year arrives heavy with expectation, and we might catch ourselves thinking that the next one will be better, lighter, easier.
This year at Vessel, we’re choosing to remove the weight from the year itself. From the external world, and from the urge to reinvent and reset. Instead, we’re turning inward, calling in the idea of integration: the ability to stand between what we’ve lived and what we’re stepping into, and to carry both.
Our simple New Year’s Eve ritual is designed to honour this idea. For this ritual, we invoke Hecate - the liminal guardian of thresholds and the in between:
- As midnight approaches (or 9 pm, if you’re like us), take a moment alone. Stand barefoot in a doorway, one foot behind you, anchored in the year that was, and the other ahead, representing what's to come.
- Pause here and breathe.
- Acknowledge and thank the weight of the past year, not as something you need to discard, but as something that has shaped you. Invite the future in, not as a promise of change, but as an unknown you are now equipped to meet.
- Hold both for a moment. Then step forward.
No declarations or discarding. Just the recognition that growth is not about leaving one life behind for another but learning how to move between them; carrying experience, resilience, and awareness across the threshold.